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Transmutation

I enjoy cooking (this is Ben talking here).  I enjoy collecting and selecting ingredients and putting them together into a passable meal.  Of all the things I enjoy making in the kitchen though bread stands out.   For most meals the quality of the ingredients is the controlling factor.  If you start with some great produce you’re going to get a great salad.  The act of good cooking is essentially creating a pleasing mixture of quality ingredients.   Baking bread, on the other hand, works at the chemical level and a biochemical level at that.   The vast majority of my breads have flour, water, salt, yeast.  Nothing else.  Not only do these simple ingredients transform so substantially but the possible outcomes starting from such simple input is staggering.  With less dependence on the ingredients the final loaf becomes a more accurate reflection of the craft of the baker.

Anyway, here are a few pictures.  Enjoy!

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Cub Scout Campout

Last weekend was the annual Cub Scout campout –Kai’s first.  We camped out on the cricket fields on the edge of town.  It was nice being close but also far enough away to make it feel like we went somewhere.   Having camped in the desert I can also say that it was much nicer to camp on a field of well trimmed grass than in the sand somewhere.    We all went out to set up the tent and then from the opening at 10am until the 4pm awards ceremony it was scouts only.   After than it was open to families so Crystal and Nora came and joined us.

The pack leader laid the ground work for his campfire story by telling the scouts that if they saw any rattle snakes with red eyes to tell him right away.  “Don’t look at them for sure but come tell me right away.”   Kai was intrigued but when Nora got wind of it she had the serious heebie jeebies and did not want to be out there as the sun was going down.  She stuck it out though and at the campfire story was totally intrigued[[it was a good story, well told, not too scary though if late at night fiddle music has been heard out in the desert half the kids would have bolted]].  Even four days later Nora told me at dinner “Dad, did you know that Martin Stone played fiddle and that after that terrible night (here she drops her voice for effect) he was never seen again.”

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Himalayas

One of the high points of our Nepal trip was a turbo prop flight along the Himalaya mountains.  We were up before dawn for a ride to the airport where after plenty of waiting and three cursory pat downs we boarded the plane.  The flight was only 30 minutes or so and even at our highest altitude we were looking up at Everest.  Very cool.

The plane had two rows of seats so every seat had a window.  On the way west along the range one person had a mountain view and on the way back the other did.  On departure there was still was a cloud layer (that later dispersed) which the mountain tops certainly exceeded but it was hard to capture a sense of the scale of the mountains.

Now I’m mostly a flat lander from the midwest and there certainly aren’t many mountains around where we live now but I have visited a few ranges and certainly flown over many.  The striking thing about the Himalayas was how abrupt they were.   From 4500ft (where Kathmandu is at) they rise another 20,000 – 25,000ft over a fairly short distance.